Energy efficiency is becoming one of the most important topics in electronics. Among others, wide band-gap semiconductors can raise efficiency and lead to shrinking volumes in power conversion systems. As different markets have regulations that require different designs, it is necessary to cope with a large variety of similar designs. By using effective modeling and simulation strategies, the efforts of building these variants can be diminished, and re-designs can be avoided. In this paper, we present a universally valid way to come to reasonable simulation results for conducted emissions of a power electronic system in the frequency range from 150 kHz up to 400 MHz. After giving an overview of the state-of-the-art, the authors show how to implement and set up a simulation environment for a gallium-nitride (GaN) power converter. It shows how to differentiate between important and not that important components for Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC), how to model these components, the printed circuit board, the load, and the setup, including the Line Impedance Stabilization Networks (LISNs), etc. Multiport S-parameter strategies as well as vector fitting methods are employed. Computational costs are kept low, and all simulations are verified with measurements; thus, this model is valid up to 400 MHz.

The near-field communication (NFC) technique finds wide applications in many aspects of modern life, e.g., contactless payment systems or authentication. Regardless of the application, typically, the requirements on the antenna structure are manifold. Frequently, limitations in the available space make the antenna design quite challenging. Beside geometrical limitations, also the matching of the antenna structure to the analog front end of the NFC transponder IC has to be taken into account. Furthermore, the NFC antenna together with the connected IC has to fulfill specific standardized values. In this paper, the optimization of an NFC antenna structure including the needed matching circuit in the multi-objective sense is proposed. Due to its simplicity and the consequently reduced computational effort, the partial-element electric circuit (PEEC) method is applied to carry out the needed field computation in the so-called NFC operating volume. Furthermore, the PEEC method offers the possibility of simply connecting lumped components to the antenna structure within the numerical analyses, which enables the optimization of the matching circuit parallel to the optimization of the antenna structure. The optimization relies on a stochastic optimization strategy, namely, the firefly algorithm (FFA). In this paper, an extended version of the general FFA is applied.

Electronic based systems (EBS) tend to become smaller in size while at the same time their functionality, complexity, and operating frequencies increase. Therefore, accurate and broadband characterization of the electric behavior of the components of such EBS is becoming more and more important for first‐time right designs, especially for electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and interference (EMI) issues. Although many of the manufacturers provide the electric characterization of their components up to, for example, 8.5 GHz, there is still a lack of information about the parasitic electromagnetic coupling of their components to others. To characterize this behavior in terms of measurement is demanding due to the small size and the high frequencies, hence the characterization by means of numerical simulations has become popular in the last years. Due to the fact that the components can be quite complex and their structure hard to model and simulate, like it is the case for the here investigated multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC), simplified models of the geometry have been typically used. In general, the electromagnetic behavior of multiple components close to each other is of interest, hence numerical efficient models must be deployed to analyze interfering effects toward each other. In the present paper we evaluate different 3D modeling strategies for MLCCs in terms of their capabilities to characterize the mutual coupling between such components.

Linear antenna arrays consisting of dipole antennas find wide applications in wireless communication systems. Typically, arrangements with uniform spacing between the array elements are applied to gain highly directive radiation patterns while controlling the radiation intensity in the side lobes. To describe such arrangements the so called Pattern Multiplication (PM) technique is frequently applied which inherently neglects the inter-element coupling. In the present paper an antenna array arrangement with non-uniformly spacing between the array elements is synthesized in the multi-objective sense. Therefore the PM technique is deficient. Hence, numerical techniques have to be applied to compute the electromagnetic field during the optimization process. Due to its simplicity and the consequently reduced computational costs the Partial Element Equivalent Circuit (PEEC) method is applied within the field computation process. The optimization relies on a stochastic particle swarm optimization strategy, namely the firefly algorithm. In the present paper an extended version of the general algorithm with additional hierarchical clustering is applied. Special attention is drawn to the development of a suitable objective function.

The field regions around antennas are distinguished through the properties of the electromagnetic field. The knowledge of the boundaries between these regions is very important for e.g. measurement engineers or in the numerical simulation to ensure a proper behavior of their results. In the present work the validity of the boundaries suggested from the literature has been analyzed using error estimations for different properties of the electromagnetic field. Analyses are conducted on dipole antennas, loop antennas as well as on Yagi-Uda arrays with various dimensions. In addition, different concepts are introduced allowing the definition of a more convenient boundary between the field regions. The proposed rules satisfy the IEEE standard definitions in a better way. For the numerical computations a one dimensional Method of Moments is applied.

In this paper, common practice RF design guidelines for SMA edge mount connectors are investigated in terms of numerical simulations and VNA measurements. These guidelines are used in a variety of applications for coaxial-to-planar interfaces but often do not provide information regarding the physical origins of increased insertion and transmission losses. The presented results in this work focus on different RF PCB design features and their impact on electromagnetic field distributions in the launching zone. The presented investigations should raise awareness on the issue of electromagnetic field resonances occurring in the RF frequency range and assist PCB design engineers to identify potential issues occurring at an coaxial-to-planar interface. The investigated PCB features facilitate a high performance RF PCB design up to a frequency of 26 GHz.